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Cameron Russell: Catwalk CV

CAMERON RUSSELL - a catwalk favourite for brands including Victoria's Secret, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Isabel Marant - is becoming one of fashion's most talked about models, but not for the way she looks. Russell gave a talk at the TEDx Conference in January this year - where she likened her success in modelling to "winning the genetic lottery" and called herself a "pretty, skinny, white woman" who was a beneficiary of a "legacy of gender and racial oppression" - and the talk has had more than 2.4 million views so far, drawing comparisons with her fellow genetically-blessed American, Christy Turlington, who has also become known for her passionate opinions.

"Becoming a model was very counter-culture for my background, which is hyper-liberal, academic and feminist," she told The Telegraph. "My mum never told me that I was beautiful when I was a kid - and I didn't read magazines or watch MTV, so I had no real consciousness about it all."

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Russell - who at just 26 has already been modelling for more than a decade - studied economics and political science at Columbia University (where Turlington also studied), and has used her profile to set up several arts initiatives, including the blog ArtRoots.info, which is dedicated to covering grassroots public art and political power; The Big Bad Lab, which creates participatory art that aims to include people in radical demonstrations of positive social change; and online magazine Interrupt, which seeks to give a platform to women who feel marginalised by mainstream media. But that doesn't mean she'd discourage others from following in her footsteps for a career in modelling.

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"If a 16-year-old had my opportunity, I would say, 'Take it, it's fantastic; it pays for university, you will get to travel, you will have access to the media,'" she said. "But it is not a career over which you have any control. Any day they can decide they don't like you anymore, so you really should have something else that you are good at and passionate about."